Canna, St Columba's Chapel. View of sculptured stone

Description Canna, St Columba's Chapel. View of sculptured stone

Date 20/9/1895

Collection Papers of Erskine Beveridge, antiquarian, Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland

Catalogue Number SC 747816

Category On-line Digital Images

Copy of IN 884

Scope and Content Sculptured Cross-shaft, A' Chill, Canna, Highland, from the front The remains of an Early Christian chapel dedicated to St Columba stand at A' Chill in the south-east of Canna, the outermost island of a group in the Inner Hebrides known as the Small Isles. Fragments of a sculptured sandstone cross-shaft, possibly dating from the 7th century, were discovered in the graveyard surrounding the chapel in the early 1890s, and were photographed by Erskine Beveridge in 1895. This front section of the cross-shaft, measuring 61cm in length and 36cm in width, is fractured. It is carved in low relief with the lower part of a figure of a man, clad in a tunic from waist to knees. His legs and feet are bare or tightly clad, and a snake coils around his feet and legs. The figure and snake are carved in great detail. The man's tunic has a broad hem at the bottom, and above it, on one side (left), is a triquetra, a symmetrical ornament of three interlaced arcs. Below the man's left foot (right) is the terminal coil of the snake. Its body passes behind the foot, in front of the left leg and behind the right leg, coming round to the front again at the right knee with its head pointing upwards towards the hem of the tunic. Source: RCAHMS contribution to SCRAN.

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/collection/747816

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